New cream can help reverse skin damage from sun

A new prescription cream called Imiquimod was found to be very effective after 24-week of use for the treatment of the skin lesion called actinic keratosis, which is caused by long-term exposure to the sun. These show themselves as brown patches of skin.

The 28-week trial, carried out by researchers at the Mount Sinai Medical Centre in New York and published in the January 09 edition of Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, found that almost 50% of the patients had marked improvement or better on the actively treated areas, while only one patient (6.7 percent) had improvement in areas treated with the placebo cream.

The total number of lesions declined from an average of 1.93 to 1.47 on the actively treated side, while the number increased from 2.07 to 2.13 on the placebo side.